GUNDAM CREATOR’S INTERVIEW: YOSHIKAZU YASUHIKO
Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, the character designer and chief animation director of the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime and author of the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin manga, shares the details behind his creative process and thoughts on female Gundam fans in this interview for Girl’s Gundam (Pub. Date 9/23/2009).
AMURO RAY MIGHT HAVE BEEN JAPANESE
Women have such a variety of ways of enjoying a work. It’s truly commendable. Any time I try to slip in things to appeal to them specifically, it proves entirely unnecessary (laughs).
Gundam was a project where the character designs were settled upon easily. A big-eyed boy with curly hair who wasn’t cheerful or, frankly, especially handsome… in other words, an anime hero quite unlike those who came before him. When Tomino, the director, approached me with this concept for the lead, I had already been envisioning just such a character. It was as if we had read each other’s minds, and Amuro’s design was quickly finalized.
Since Amuro wasn’t going to be handsome, we decided to make his adversary, Char Aznable, good-looking instead. This movie was inspired by the character Sharkin from Raideen, a show Tomino and I had worked on together previously. He had been well-received by female fans and through him, I learned villains were also capable of leaving a strong impression. But since handsome characters aren’t interesting enough on their own, Char needed an individual element to distinguish him. Thus, the mask to conceal his face. This had the added effect of giving him an air of mystery. Call it haphazard or superficial of me (laughs).
As for Bright Noa, he’s nineteen but mentally much older. Role-wise, he’s the middle management type. So I gave him his hairstyle imagining he’d develop a receding hairline a few years down the line (laughs).
The biggest factor behind us being able to design the cast so freely was the TV programming agency becoming lax with their inspections. Normally, they’d go over everything and make demands like: “The hero must be Japanese! He must be handsome and cheerful!” But with Gundam, they let everything pass without comment. I had even thought up a backup setting for Amuro which changed the Ray in his name to Rei and listed his birthplace as being in the mountains of Shimane… but we didn’t end up needing it (laughs). While we’re on this topic, the characters of Mirai Yashima and Hayato Kobayashi sprang from this hidden agenda of wanting to portray the Japanese in supporting instead of starring roles for a change. That’s also why I made them shorter and plumper, with smaller eyes (laughs).
Regarding the costumes, I tried to add some fun touches. I felt the Federation uniforms would seem unappealing if the colors were too military-like, so I went with a 19th century, French Tricolore-inspired palette. In contrast, I gave the Zeon uniforms more traditional coloring, hoping to evoke the image of pre-war Germany; less Nazi, more Prussian. I wanted outfits that kids could cosplay by customizing their school uniforms. I even hoped the really dedicated girls would do matching looks with their boyfriends (laughs). And sure enough, the cosplayers appeared! I remember shouting: “Yes! There they are!”
A WORK BECOMES ATTRACTIVE THE MORE PEOPLE PLAY WITH IT
In retrospect, Gundam came out during a transitional period when anime was moving away from the standard hero pattern of story-telling. So while it’s a military drama, there are still some unrealistic parts. Take Char’s cape, for instance. I wanted him to wear one, but if it were too long, it would look cartoonish… so I made it waist-length. As for his helmet, those horns serve no purpose beyond being a safety hazard, but I figured an anime character requires some extra ornamentation (laughs). I troubled myself over these details a lot, and even aiming for the middle ground, things got muddled (laughs).
But there were people who had fun parodying such details. I remember them dubbing Char’s cape ‘The Cockroach Mantle’ and remarking on how he looked ‘pretty adorable’ scurrying away from battle in it (laughs). Garma, the narcissist rich boy, got called cute and became more popular with female fans than we ever anticipated. Even the freckled weakling Kai had his admirers. As for Amuro, many girls said he was the kind of character they couldn’t leave alone, that they wanted to take care of him.
It was around this time that the light parody doujinshi*1 scene, including yaoi*2, was growing with women at the center of it. Their work felt fresh, completely unlike the stodgy parody works being made up until then, and took me off guard. Some were angered by it, claiming it made a mockery of the source material, but I didn’t think so. It was brand-new culture, after all. So while keeping in mind issues of copyright, be it parody, fangirling, yaoi or cosplay… I’d like to encourage everyone to continue enjoying Gundam in their own unique way.
TRANSLATION NOTES: *1 Doujinshi: Japanese fan comics and zines that are primarily comedic, romantic and/or pornographic. The creation of doujinshi became a staple of Japanese fandom upon the founding of Comiket in 1975, and the production of them boomed after the influential release of Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979.
*2 Yaoi: A genre of doujinshi, written primarily by women for consumption by other women, featuring romance and sex between male characters from established media properties. Mecha anime doujinshi, those parodying Mobile Suit Gundam in particular, accounted for most of the material produced in what is referred to as the First Wave of yaoi.